Babysteps onto a Rebuilt Bridge
by mayachain
Summary: St John is adjusting to life among the 24/7. sequel-ish snippets to Rebuilding Burned Bridges. This chapter: The needle is about half the size of St John's favorite green pen.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Babysteps onto a Rebuilt Bridge (_Rebuilding Burned Bridges_ sequel-ish snippet)  
Author: mayachain  
Featuring: St John Allerdyce  
Rating: PG  
Summary:: The needle is about half the size of St John's favorite green pen.  
Note: Thank you to **calla_comet** for looking everything over for me!

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Rebuilding Burned Bridges:Babysteps onto a Rebuilt Bridge

Stacked at the very back of Bobby's fridge, behind the beer and the cheese and the fudge for the ice cream, there is a tiny, nasty-looking syringe. St John has never commented on its presence in the small flat that has become his home, has never demanded it be thrown out. He knows why it's there, knows that it's not meant for him.

Getting rid of his powers is not something he's ever wasted a thought on before. Even in the beginning, when an inexplicable current of heat had surged through his body and _something_ had exploded one of his mother's tea lights, the possibility of putting a stop to it forever had never been in his thoughts. The new developments within his body, such a far cry from whatever normal puberty weirdness everyone around him had been expecting, had been as scary as they had been exciting. Maybe it had been because of the fearless support of the first person he told, but to little St John Allerdyce, there had been no traumatic adjustments. Even when the fire had proved horrifically deadly to that very same person, it never seemed _unnatural_ to him.

During the roughly eight years since, he has discovered what might be the limits to his powers while all the time finding new ways to surpass them. He has seen the same thing in others, too, seen them unleash it all, reach the next stage towards full potential, and terrible as some of it has been, all of it has been beautiful.

There are repercussions, of course, as there always are when one is handed great gifts by whoever is in charge of these things. Other than wishing (raging, crying, bitterly praying for a chance to turn back time) for better control when he was eleven years old, he has never once regretted becoming something better than human.

The fire is a part of him, defines him in a way he could never put into words. He never thought he could have a nightmare worse than the match exploding in his stepsister's face, but the sheer thought of being deprived of it, at feeling the sting of the needle and everything that makes him Pyro just _go_, ceasing to be, has terrified him nightly since he watched it happen to Mystique. He still wakes Bobby up jerking out of sleep with Magneto's hollow voice in his head, _You have no idea what suffering is, boy, no idea._

It's true, he has no idea, and he never thought he might want to. Still, every mutant St John socialized with these days has gone without. To Mystique, the experience was violent, filled with humiliation and betrayal from which even now he's not even sure she will ever recover. The Leech kid is the very embodiment of it; the college students that are fast becoming his friends have all done it voluntarily, even if sometimes persuaded by their parents . _All in all, it was a worthwhile experiment,_ Bobby had said, even after confessing that the one week he'd spent without the ice that defines him had driven him crazy. While St John hadn't understood, then, what had motivated Bobby to do it, he got that it'd gained Bobby some weird kind of insight.

The 24/7 all know what it's like to _not_ have access to their innate powers, to deliberately live without them and then, with that knowledge, to ichoose/i their powers and all that comes with them. St John is not used to be an outsider to those who have gone through a bad experience, to those who know what they're talking about.

The second time Bobby caught him eying the syringe, he made it clear that trying the vaccine is not a requirement. The others would never dare to, wouldn't even dream of pressuring him. But. The fact remains that they've all done it, which makes it some kind of weird initiation ritual.

St John has never cared about jumping through the hoops to join a group before. But every time he grabs for the beer or the cheese or the fudge, he gets a feeling just below his ribs that this insight might be something he wants to write about in his church store notebook.

*


	2. Chapter 2

__Still writing **mininanowrimo**. Two days ago, one of the prompts was _The only way most people recognize their limits is by trespassing on them. ~ Tom Morris_. It made me think of St John, and it gave me this.

Title: Trespassing on your limits (Babysteps onto a Rebuilt Bridge, part 2)  
Author: **ms_jvh_shuh**  
Rating: PG  
Summary: _...the college students who are fast becoming his friends..._  
Notes: I'd like to remind you that this is fanfiction of the X-Men Movieverse, where real physics and St John's fire don't quite merge. Unbetaed, so I hope the tenses are not too mixed up - feel free to yell if you spot something. Also, I feel like I'm neglecting Bobby here, although none of what you're about to read would've been possible without him.

**Trespassing on your limits**

[Amanda]

He is breathing heavily, gulping breaths so hard his chest feels like close to exploding. His shoulders are tight, his back is bent forward, the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up as if electrified, sizzling. Both his fists are clenched white, his clothes are slowly getting soaked by rivers of exhausted sweat.

If he weren't so busy gulping for breath, his throat would give off a series of short, hard, frustrated groans.

A few feet away on the 24/7's gym floor, a young woman is sitting in a tailor's seat, looking up at him. Her brown curls are pushed back into a ponytail, still dry, her cheeks are barely flushed, her spine is gracefully rigid and her eyes are searching his face intently. A light breeze that has no place down deep in a cellar upsets the shawl around her shoulders. She looks serene, entirely calm if alert, her stillness a sharp contrast to the huffing stinking mess St John has become.

In another life, he might hate her. In another life, he might fantasized about letting embers rain on her skin.

In this life, though, he thinks he might just love her. Not-one but she could have shown him that whoever has written the laws of physics has got it wrong, it _is_ possible to sustain flames inside a vacuum.

[Andrew]

He's been sleeping in Bobby's queen-sized bed for seven weeks, and on Bobby's couch for about three weeks before then. During that entire time, St John hasn't once slept without at least one small light on. That very first night, he would have forced himself to manage somehow, would never have asked Bobby to leave that tiny lamp on. Bobby being Bobby, there had never been any need to ask the question.

Now, he is standing in the middle of a room perched in absolute darkness. His breaths are calm, but they are forced under tight, tight control. If he weren't able to sense exactly where the others are from the difference on body temperature to his own, the total lack of light would be unbearable. The tall presence filling the space directly behind him fails to freak him out only because he can also hear the same soft sounds he's fallen asleep to for sixty-eight nights, the sound of Bobby breathing. If not for that and the slight chill from a little to his left, he knows he would be panicking.

Instead, St John stares hard at an indeterminable spot in front of him, stares all the harder because the blackness doesn't reveal _anything_. He can feel it, though, can feel the ball of fire burning and hear the air crackle as it hovers in the middle of Stella's living room.

He needs to find a way to hack into the Brotherhood's expense account and buy Reynolds... something.

_Black fire._ It's the coolest thing he's ever seen.

[Susan]

He's holding his breath, afraid the tiniest puff will break his, will break her concentration. Around them, Traipsie and Reynolds are squinting themselves into a fest headache, their eyes of absolutely no use to them.

Her mint-stained breath touches his face as she leans closer. Her thick glasses are shoved up high on her head, mousy bangs falling down onto her cheeks just shy of obscuring her vision. The intense focus of her gaze might be frightening if he didn't know exactly what she's looking for.

Her voice, when it comes, is satisfied and proud and awed all at once for all that it's barely a whisper. "There."

Her eyes have lit up, and the whole girl is transformed from wall flower to someone beautiful as she watches avidly, fascinated. For a brief moment, St John feels a sting of envy. What he has shown her tonight is something no-one else will ever see.

Still. He feels better than he has for weeks for having done this, for having given her this, for being the one to put that expression on her face. Who could have known that igniting one single atom is be more exhilarating than exploding an entire star.

*

* * *

It seems like I'm far from finished with this 'verse. I already have s few scribbles that might become the next chapter, but there is no overall story arc for _Babysteps_ as of yet.


End file.
